Company:

Avebe manufactures potato starch
and potato protein. Each year, Avebe
processes more than 2 million tons
of potatoes grown by a cooperative
of approx.. 2,400 farmers. Avebe
sells their products to food, building,
adhesives, paper, textile and animal
feed industries. Established in 1919
and headquartered in the Netherlands,
Avebe employs approx.. 1,300 people
in offices worldwide.

Challenge:

Most people think of potatoes
as comfort food: mashed potatoes,
french fries and potato chips.
What most people don’t realise
is there’s so much more to potatoes.
Avebe unlocks their secrets
and adds value to them.

Avebe’s international sales and
distribution network is powered
by an MES system. If the MES system
fails and can’t be recovered quickly
from a backup, the network will
begin to crumble and Avebe may
lose customers and revenue.

Results:

Supports Avebe’s digital
transformation to virtualisation

Delivers 24.7.365 Availability
of the MES system

Extends DR with Direct Restore
to Microsoft Azure

The Business Challenge

There’s more to potatoes than you think.

Potatoes are a source of endless possibilities, and no one knows this better than
Avebe, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of potato starch and potato protein.

Avebe extracts starch and protein from potatoes and sells them to manufacturers
in the food, building, adhesives, paper, textile and animal feed industries.
Manufacturers use potato starch and protein to make for example ice cream,
candy, paper, yarn, glue, building materials and pet food.

Avebe’s international sales and distribution network is powered by a manufacturing
execution system (MES). Before virtualising the MES system, Avebe had to be sure
it could be backed up and recovered quickly and reliably.

“We’re a 24.7.365 company, so our MES system has to run 24.7.365 without
exception,” said Arnold Keizer, System Administrator for Avebe. “There was no value
in virtualising MES unless we could guarantee its availability 24.7.365.”

If Avebe’s MES system isn’t available 24.7.365, the sales and distribution
network may falter.

“One day of downtime in just one of our production facilities could cost the business
$100,000 in revenue,” Keizer said. “We have several production facilities in the
Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, so downtime would be devastating to the business.”

Avebe considered several solutions to keep the MES system running continuously,
but Keizer said the choice was obvious.

“Veeam is the only solution that was built specifically for virtualisation,” he explained.
“And, Veeam is the only solution to take 24.7.365 Availability even higher—to the cloud.”

“Being able to restore Veeam backups directly to Microsoft Azure lets us leverage
Azure as an additional data centre for DR,” Keizer said. “Making sure our MES system
is available 24.7.365 is even easier.”

When the MES system wouldn’t restart following a software update, Keizer restored
it in minutes with Veeam. Avebe’s sales and distribution network was unaffected.

“If we hadn’t been using Veeam, we might have missed delivery deadlines and had
to pay penalties to customers for breaking service level agreements (SLAs),” Keizer
said. “We would have had a lot of annoyed customers because they would have
missed their production deadlines too.”

Keizer said Avebe’s sales and distribution network is functioning at full capacity,
thanks to 24.7.365 Availability.

“Our mission is to unlock the secrets of the potato and extract everything possible,”
he said. “No other company in the world can match our abilities. We’re grateful
to Veeam for helping us avoid downtime.”

The Results

Supports Avebe’s digital transformation to virtualisation
There was no value in virtualising MES unless Avebe could guarantee
its availability 24.7.365. Avebe is a 24.7.365 company, so the MES system
must run 24.7.365 without exception.

Delivers 24.7.365 Availability of the MES system
Avebe’s MES system is the backbone of the company’s international sales
and distribution network. The network can’t operate unless the MES
system is available at all times.

Extends DR with Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure
Today’s modern data centres are no longer constrained by their physical locations.
Veeam lets Avebe take full advantage of Azure’s flexible and scalable cloud resources
with Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure.